How to use clock() in C++

How do I call clock() in C++?

For example, I want to test how much time a linear search takes to find a given element in an array.

Solution 1:

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdio>
#include <ctime>

int main() {
    std::clock_t start;
    double duration;

    start = std::clock();

    /* Your algorithm here */

    duration = ( std::clock() - start ) / (double) CLOCKS_PER_SEC;

    std::cout<<"printf: "<< duration <<'\n';
}

Solution 2:

An alternative solution, which is portable and with higher precision, available since C++11, is to use std::chrono.

Here is an example:

#include <iostream>
#include <chrono>
typedef std::chrono::high_resolution_clock Clock;

int main()
{
    auto t1 = Clock::now();
    auto t2 = Clock::now();
    std::cout << "Delta t2-t1: " 
              << std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::nanoseconds>(t2 - t1).count()
              << " nanoseconds" << std::endl;
}

Running this on ideone.com gave me:

Delta t2-t1: 282 nanoseconds

Solution 3:

clock() returns the number of clock ticks since your program started. There is a related constant, CLOCKS_PER_SEC, which tells you how many clock ticks occur in one second. Thus, you can test any operation like this:

clock_t startTime = clock();
doSomeOperation();
clock_t endTime = clock();
clock_t clockTicksTaken = endTime - startTime;
double timeInSeconds = clockTicksTaken / (double) CLOCKS_PER_SEC;

Solution 4:

On Windows at least, the only practically accurate measurement mechanism is QueryPerformanceCounter (QPC). std::chrono is implemented using it (since VS2015, if you use that), but it is not accurate to the same degree as using QueryPerformanceCounter directly. In particular it's claim to report at 1 nanosecond granularity is absolutely not correct. So, if you're measuring something that takes a very short amount of time (and your case might just be such a case), then you should use QPC, or the equivalent for your OS. I came up against this when measuring cache latencies, and I jotted down some notes that you might find useful, here; https://github.com/jarlostensen/notesandcomments/blob/master/stdchronovsqcp.md